Hidden Leopard goodies

Writing for the New York Times, David Pogue points out a number of nice features in Leopard that Apple neglected to mention in its "300 feature" round-up. Among them: the ability to locate menu items directly from the Help menu's search field; faster Spotlight returning of application listings, which allows it to be used as an application launcher more effectively, and the ability to enter equations into Spotlight's search field and perform calculations. There are other Spotlight enhancements as well. You can search the included dictionary from within Spotlight and more.

Grid spacing makes its return from Mac OS 9, allowing you to control how close icons sit together in windows. Every document icon in Leopard appears as a preview of what's in it (the first page of a Word document, for instance).

Also, Time Machine works in iPhoto (for finding lost photos), Address Book (for accidentally deleted contacts), and Mail (recovering deleted e-mail). Pogue writes: "each time you click the Jump Back arrow, the window before you changes to reveal the way it looked the last time your photo library, address book file, or e-mail stash changed. You can also drag through the timeline on the right if you remember the date when things went wrong."

Earlier today we posted our first impressions of Leopard as well as roundup of news, insights, and tidbits (other application specific updates can be tracked using our search, while virtualization developers Parallels said its software is Leopard-ready, while VMware has offered a v1.1 release candidate for Leopard.) We also have a screenshot gallery of some of the new features.

by MacNN Staff